Summer reading: Stand out of our Light – Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy

If, like me, you are looking for summer reads, take a look at “Stand out of our Light – Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy”, which was authored by James Williams, the winner of the first edition of the Nine Dots Prize.

The Nine Dots Prize is an initiative to encourage and “reward original thinking in response to contemporary societal issues”. It was launched in late 2016, offering US$100,000 and a book deal with Cambridge University Press. The inaugural challenge of the Nine Dots Prize invited applicants to answer the question ‘Are digital technologies making politics impossible?’.

The winner of the inaugural challenge was James Williams, who explored how “digital technologies are making all forms of politics worth having impossible as they privilege our impulses over our intentions and are ‘designed to exploit our psychological vulnerabilities in order to direct us toward goals that may or may not align with our own’.”

The resulting book has now been published, and is available for (free) download here, and for purchase here. I have just started reading it. So, I can’t really comment on the book. But I am very intrigued by the proposition of the book and, of course, to check out the first winner of this prize.

UPDATE: I have come across a related talk by the author, at an RSA event. You can listen to it, here.

If you want to join me in a kind of ‘virtual book club’ this summer, buy or download James Williams’s book, and let me know what you think.

2 thoughts on “Summer reading: Stand out of our Light – Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy”

So, the problem with digital technologies is that “they privilege our impulses over our intentions and are ‘designed to exploit our psychological vulnerabilities in order to direct us toward goals that may or may not align with our own’?”
Never mind digital media and politics: this sounds like an indictment of marketing as a whole.